1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a door closer that gently pulls a door of a vehicle when closing the door.
2) Description of the Related Art
In general, a trunk lid that is a door of a vehicle can be put in a fully closed state by allowing a latch mechanism provided on the trunk lid to be engaged with a striker. However, since a weather strip is mounted on a rim of a trunk room opening of the vehicle body, in order to close the trunk lid, it is necessary to strongly push down the trunk lid to overcome a reaction force of the weather strip. Therefore, the vehicle body is largely vibrated, which gives a passenger an unpleasant feeling.
To cope with the problem, a closer, which engages the latch mechanism with the striker before the closing trunk lid is fully closed, and then, pulls the trunk lid to establish the fully closed state, is proposed. In this closer, an actuator drives the striker so that the striker can move from a standby position to the closed position along a closing direction of the trunk lid. After the striker located in the standby position is engaged with the latch mechanism, if the striker is moved to the closed position, the trunk lid is pulled and fully closed. The conventional closer has been disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2002-21396 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2000-8675.
In such a closer, however, when the actuator that moves the striker from the standby position to the closed position becomes out of order, trunk lid cannot be fully closed. Especially when the actuator trouble occurs as the striker is in the standby position, the striker cannot be moved to the closed position, even if the striker is engaged with the latch mechanism of the closing trunk lid. In this case, raindrops or the like may be leaked into the trunk room.